Last month there was a spirited discussion on this blog after James Hoff admonished us to rethink our use of technology in the classroom. He made several excellent points about the potential downsides to using technology with our students and pointed out the danger in not encouraging students to be wary, even critical, of big-business sites like Facebook and YouTube. Although I agreed with a lot of what James wrote, I thought his responders too brought up some great points in opposition, and I found the discussion that followed in the comments thoroughly engaging. But given that almost all of that conversation tended towards the theoretical and the non-personal, I think it’s worth adding to the discussion some highlights from real-life moments in a classroom.

After teaching Writing to first-year students for over eight years, a few weeks ago I experienced a “first” in the classroom. One of my students read a paper out loud to the class in which he came out as gay. In this day and age this may not seem all that remarkable – especially considering that the younger generations seem to be more accepting and less homophobic with each year that passes. Still, in a world, a country, a state that does not give gay people the same rights that everyone else has – namely, the right to marry — and in a city where the number one insult hurled on the playground is still “faggot” (I personally heard it shouted 3 times by three different boys recently), I find my student’s decision admirably brave. In his paper he spoke about coming out to a small group of friends and family as a gay teen in North Carolina and how he eventually started posting videos on YouTube instructing other teenagers on how and when to come out.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPwQGCjaGho[/youtube]

Even though he was used to coming out online, in the classroom he was visibly nervous — his voice cracked and his hands shook as he read. Later, as we discussed the student’s essay, I was impressed when a few students in the class were able to note the irony of the situation – that the physical proximity involved in facing a handful of your peers, can be much more intimidating than divulging even the most intimate of secrets to thousands or even millions of people in the safety of cyberspace. True, my student agreed, though people may leave comments on YouTube videos, it is a different and often less intense moment of exchange than the face to face. To be sure, I have felt the reality of this in my own life as well as in my teaching. It is one of the reasons I use blogs or BlackBoard as an integral part of my course each semester. It doesn’t always work exactly how I want it to, but I use these technologies in the hopes that it will enhance face to face interaction and enrich classroom discussion, not replace it. I would argue that my student’s experiences on YouTube likely paved the way in giving him the courage to come out in person in a public way, such as he did that day in our class.

Classrooms can be intimate settings. In a discussion-based class where students are given the space to think about ideas – their own and others – and they are invited to share their questions and reflections with peers, conversation can have all the excitement of discovering a new friend or even a new romantic relationship. I have been in both positions – as a teacher and as a student- in classrooms where the group is invigorated by the level of discussion and the energy in the room is electric as the world of ideas opens up before us. As a student, I have had the same experience with online discussion as well – where everyone is online, checking the discussion board several times a day, thoroughly absorbed by the course content and what each person in the class has to contribute to the discussion. I am trying to figure out how to replicate this in my own teaching. Most of us who have been teaching for any length of time know that when a class is working well, the instructor doesn’t even need to be present – students are able to generate lively discussions all on their own and sustain them. But let’s face it, sometimes we get a class that just won’t talk. I happen to have just such a class this semester. I have struggled terribly with this incredibly taciturn group all term, trying every trick in my WAC arsenal to get them to open up and talk to each other. But often the class ends up feeling like a question and answer session rather than a group discussion. And even online our discussions don’t seem to ever pick up much momentum.

Still. One day a few weeks ago after a stilted yet somehow contentious conversation about social class in America, (we were discussing a Dorothy Allison essay in which she explores and explains her working-class identity), I went home and tried to compose, to the best of my ability, a summary of the discussion based on my memory and a few notes I had taken during the class. I typed the summary and posted it on BlackBoard and invited students to add to it or to change something if they’d felt I’d misremembered or misrepresented something they had said. No one changed or challenged a thing, but two students did make posts in which they shared some of the things they had been thinking, but had not shared in the moment. Both students explained that it had taken them some time and some distance from the conversation for them to process and articulate their thoughts. Both students made excellent, thoughtful posts that were moving and personal. And although no one else in the class responded to either of the posts (I did), I could see that their posts were heavily viewed and so I felt like their contributions enlarged the discussion in some way.

Somehow, even though my class this semester is struggling to communicate with each other face to face and via technology, I can see that both venues have value and both go a long way towards drawing our students in to a public conversation about the world around us. Becoming part of a public conversation is a process, and feeling entitled to participate fully in that conversation might take longer for some than others, but as educators, it is our duty to encourage students to participate via whatever means are at our disposal. It is when technology takes time away from students’ opportunities to engage in the conversation that I think the real dangers arise.